


Alone in the Dark

by Vertiga



Series: Light is Other People [1]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Grand Theft Auto Setting, Angst, Fake AH Crew, Female Jack, Gen, Hallucinations, Hurt/Comfort, Torture, Trans Male Character, Trans Ryan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5105777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vertiga/pseuds/Vertiga
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of an explosion, Ryan wakes up alone in the dark. He has no idea where he is or who took him, and the rest of the crew believe that he is already dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alone in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Ryanthepowerbottomguy put out a general call for trans!Ryan whump, and since angst is my middle name, I took up the challenge. It got a lot longer than expected!

It’s dark when he wakes up. Pitch black, and his face _burns_ , and for a horribly long time Ryan thinks his eyes have been burned out. It’s only by bringing his hands up to his face and measuring the tiny change in the darkness that he can reassure himself that he isn’t completely blind. 

There’s a faint ringing in his ears, and his whole body aches like he’s gone ten rounds with a cement truck. He remembers the first searing instant of an explosion, Michael’s good work going off a little earlier than intended, but everything after that is blank.

A fumbling check reveals no major injuries, just flash burns on his hands and face and generalised bruising everywhere else. He’s still wearing his t-shirt and jeans, but his jacket and boots and all his equipment are gone. Ryan’s no amateur – he recognises a captivity situation when he’s in one. He slowly shuffles around, stretching out his cramped muscles and surveying his cell.

He’s alone in a room which proves to be barely more than six feet square, the floor, walls and ceiling all made of the same gritty concrete. There’s a metal door in one wall, scalding cold against his burnt fingertips as he feels his way around. No handle, no lock on the inside, just a bare sheet of metal flush with the concrete. There’s barely enough space around the edge of the door for Ryan’s fingernails, and after scrabbling at it for a while, he gives up. The sound of his nails wearing away on the concrete is grating on his nerves in the silence.

It’s so dark and quiet that Ryan is pretty sure he’s a long way underground, where even the faintest vibrations of traffic noise and industry can’t reach.

There’s no sign of the rest of the crew, no telling what happened to any of them, and Ryan spares a thought to hope that they aren’t being held in some other concrete prison box. He considers shouting, but drawing attention to himself could only end badly. The crew will be looking for him, and he should gave them as long as possible to find him before anything worse happens.

 _If they’re even alive,_ he thinks, and hates himself for doubting. He’s pretty sure the others shouldn’t have been close enough for the early explosion to take them out. The only other person nearby was Michael. Michael, who was inside, setting the bombs...

 _Jesus christ._ Ryan feels abruptly sick. He curls up on the concrete and tries not to think about the charred and broken mess the explosion would have left behind. It’s all too easy to imagine Michael’s red curls blackened, his bright grin peeled back to the bloody skull beneath. Geoff has never been good at seeing his boys hurt, and Ryan knows he’ll go to pieces when they find Michael’s body. Ryan wishes he could be there to comfort him.

_And what if they think I got blown up too?_ Ryan thinks hazily. _Then they won’t look for me._

It’s a horrifying thought, and one that Ryan tries his best to push away. There’s nothing he can do for himself as long as the door stays shut, and if he starts thinking that the crew aren’t coming for him, he’ll go mad in his solitude. 

It’s cold, and Ryan is heartsick and dizzy. He can’t say for sure how long he lies in the dark, curled in on his side to try and stay warm. His chest feels tight and tender with bruises, and he knows he ought to have taken off his binder, but it’s too cold to give up the extra layer. 

He resists going to the toilet for as long as he can, but eventually, even with no sign of water, his body won’t let him ignore it any longer. The room seems completely flat, so he picks a corner at random and squats down, wrinkling his nose at the strong smell. 

He retreats as far as he can afterwards, curling up against the opposite wall, and tries not to think about how thirsty he is. He’d assumed that someone must have taken him for information, one of the Fake AH Crew’s many rivals, but the more time he spends in the dark, the more he begins to wonder if he’s just being left to die. He can ignore the growing grumbling of his stomach, but he won’t last more than a few days without water. 

Ryan sleeps, or thinks he does. It’s hard to tell the difference in the darkness, especially once the hallucinations kick in. 

The ringing in his ears fades in and out at random, and sometimes he could swear there is something scratching at the walls of his prison. He tries to catch it, expecting that some kind of insect has managed to slip through the crack of the door, but his fingers only find bare, cold concrete. There is nothing alive here but him. 

He tries humming, giving himself something he can be sure is real, but as his thirst grows, even that small motion hurts his throat too much. 

He keeps his dry eyes shut, letting his brain play out whatever images it wishes on the insides of his eyelids. The pictures are full of fire and blood and Michael’s shattered corpse, a twisted greatest hits compilation of every time the Fake AH has crossed the line, and everything Ryan fears. Opening his eyes doesn’t make them go away. The best he can hope for is brief respites where he sees the good times with his crew, the high of a heist gone well, the quiet of an evening drinking cocoa on the couch with the Lads, or just a brief spell of blessed darkness behind his eyes. Sometimes, even oblivion is better. 

His head aches, his heart beats too fast and too loud in his ears, his tongue is huge and numb in his mouth, and Ryan is beginning to believe, in his moments of lucidity, that he doesn’t have long left to live. There’s no way of measuring time beyond the complaints of his shivering, dessicated, starving body, but that alone is enough. 

He’s drifting, lost in a memory of fireworks on Mount Chiliad on a cold, clear night, when the door finally opens. 

The sudden light is like a firework exploding on his eyelids, sending stabbing pain through his skull, and he rolls limply away from the open door, too far gone to even check who has come for him. 

‘Fuckin’ stinks in here,’ a deep, rough voice says, and somewhere in his delirium Ryan’s heart sinks. He doesn’t know that voice. 

‘Get ‘im out, then,’ a second voice replies, and there are suddenly hands grabbing Ryan’s arms. 

The grasping fingers bruise his flesh, feeling as though they’re clawing into his bones, and Ryan groans weakly at the pain. He wants to fight them, but he can barely move. 

‘See, give ‘im four days in the hole, even the Vagabond’s a pussy,’ the second voice says, full of laughter at Ryan’s pitiful state. 

Ryan growls, reacting to the slur with a hard-learned survival instinct, but he can’t even keep his eyes open. A kitten would be more of a threat. 

‘Down, boy!’ The first voice says, and a boot slams into Ryan’s withered stomach. 

He curls up, gasping as the two voices laugh. 

They drag him away, the knees of his jeans scraping and catching on concrete as they take him into another room, and Ryan’s dry eyes adjust slowly to the bright fluorescent light. He just manages to catch sight of a set of manacles on the wall near a long table before he’s being hoisted up and slammed into the concrete. 

Cruel hands force his trembling arms above his head, and steel closes tightly around his wrists. 

The men back away, leaving Ryan mostly hanging by his arms. His bare feet touch the ground, but there’s too little strength in his legs to support his full weight. His shoulders begin to ache and burn almost immediately. 

The two men stand and watch him impassively for a minute, giving him time to understand his plight and feel the discomfort of his position. 

Ryan can see that the table is set with implements of torture – knives, an small electrical generator, a metal bat, cattle brands and a blowtorch, as well as other unknown items hidden under a plastic sheet. 

He’s not surprised, but still a slow churn of horror starts up in his guts. He was right that someone wanted information, but they were smart enough to soften him up first, and he knows his defences are down. 

He says nothing, waiting for the first question or the first blow, whichever his tormentors choose to lead with. 

The two men are stocky, hairy, one ginger and one blond, dressed in the nondescript denim and plaid of every redneck in the county. Ryan had hoped for some gang sign he recognised, but the pair look like meth cooks or low-rent bounty hunters. It stings to think that they aren’t even part of a rival gang - just two assholes in the right place at the right time to take him. 

Ryan’s eyes won’t stay open, but when he can manage it, he glares at them both. 

‘You know how this goes, right?’ The taller, ginger man says. ‘We want answers, you won’t give them, we fuck you up a bit, you tell us what we want to know. You’re probably an old hand at this shit.’ 

_No, I was never you,_ Ryan thinks. The Vagabond’s reputation far exceeds his own appetite for cruelty. If the Fake AH are desperate enough to torture, Kdin handles it. Ryan likes good, clean mayhem, not this kind of drawn out suffering. 

‘What ain’t usual is that you’re four days dry right now,’ the man continues, grinning and showing off meth-blackened teeth. ‘You’re weak as shit. You ain’t in a position to be holding out on us, so you’ll tell us what we want to know.’ 

Ryan doesn’t react. Silently, he thinks that the kidnappers have pushed him harder than they intended. They’re right that he’s weak, but they’re wrong about their timeline. Ryan hadn’t drunk anything in almost ten hours before the heist even started, and the explosion that let them snatch him has taken a toll on his body. As dehydration has stressed his heart and his breathing, his binder has only made it worse. He’s closer to dying than they think. 

It’s a terrible kind of comfort, but it’s all he has – when they start torturing him, Ryan knows he won’t live for long. 

‘Silent type? Yup, we thought so,’ the blond says happily. He picks up the jump cables on the table and makes a show of snapping the ends together, striking sparks and filling the air with the sizzle of electricity. The hair on Ryan’s arms stands up. 

‘We want everything – your contacts, your money stashes, your weapons, Ramsey’s home address, Brownman’s fuckin’ favourite beer, whatever,’ he says, still striking sparks. ‘You just start talking when you’ve had enough.’ 

Ryan almost smiles for a moment, wondering if these assholes would even believe that Brownman doesn’t drink, then there’s metal touching his arm and his whole body seizes. 

The generator sends current coursing through him, and Ryan’s heart skips in his chest. Every muscle draws tight at once, baring his teeth in a snarl even as a high whine of pain escapes him. 

When the shock ends, he hangs limp and twitching, gasping and coughing as his heart tries to find its rhythm. His head lolls, beads of blood dripping from his tongue where he sank his teeth into it. 

‘Got something to say, Vagabond?’ 

Ryan says nothing. It’s almost amusing, that these idiots know the Fake AH, know the Vagabond, and yet they clearly don’t know anything. Ryan would rather die than give up his crew, even if they’ll never know what happened in this god-forsaken hole. There’s no stronger loyalty than love. And if they’re not careful, the two morons are going to kill him pretty quickly anyway. 

_Just a little longer,_ Ryan thinks to himself. _It’ll be over soon._

‘Alrighty then,’ the man says, and there’s another touch of metal against his cold skin. 

Ryan seizes, then goes limp, then seizes, then goes limp as the man shocks him repeatedly. He’s barely conscious after the first two, hazed with pain and endorphins. He throws up pure bile on the fourth shock, his system going into shutdown, and the man jumps back with a shout of disgust. 

Ryan lets sour drool drip on the floor, wheezing for breath. 

‘Enough with the shocks,’ the ginger says, sounding very far away. ‘He’s spacing out.’ 

‘Right,’ the blond says, sounding pissed, and Ryan hears the jump leads hit the table with a clang. ‘Fucker threw up on me.’ 

‘Quit bitchin’, you’re gonna have to burn everything afterwards anyway.’ 

‘You get your damn hands dirty then.’ 

There’s a moment of silence, then the crack of a plastic water bottle being opened. Burning hot fingers tilt Ryan’s head up, and there’s a sudden flood of water down his face, pouring into his mouth. It tastes like soot and sweat and face paint. 

He chokes, almost throws up again, but pure instinct forces him to gulp down as much water as he can. His mind can accept it, but his body doesn’t want to die. 

‘There, that woke the sumbitch up again,’ the man says gleefully, as Ryan gasps and blinks water out of his eyes. 

The man throws the empty bottle aside and picks a heavy skinning knife from the table. He cuts the hem of Ryan’s grey t-shirt and tears it open, then pauses in surprise at the black vest underneath. 

‘What in hell?’ 

‘Who wears a stab vest under heavy body armour?’ 

The ginger laughs. ‘You’re a paranoid sumbitch, ain’t you?’ 

Ryan isn’t surprised they don’t recognise a binder, but he doesn’t want to know how they’ll react when they realise what it is. 

The knife slides under the side of his binder, cutting into his skin, and Ryan kicks out in a panic. 

It’s a lucky blow, catching the man in the balls and sending him staggering backwards, cursing and moaning. He drops the knife, and Ryan wishes he could pick it up. The manacles are cutting into his wrists, but even with the slow trickle of blood he can’t slip free. 

The blond is laughing, ‘Kitty still got claws, huh?’ 

Ryan shares his amusement at his partner’s pain, but when the ginger straightens up there’s murder in his eyes. 

‘You fucking bitch,’ he spits, grabbing the metal bat from the table. 

He winds up and swings full force at Ryan’s leg, shattering his right shin like a toothpick. 

Ryan howls, shock forcing the sound out of him as pain roars up his spine. 

‘Let’s see you kick me now!’ the ginger yells, winding up and aiming at Ryan’s other leg. The bone breaks with a sick crunch, shards bursting through Ryan’s skin, and Ryan chokes on his screams. 

The bat rises and falls, breaking his knees, his feet, shattering his lower legs in three different places. His jeans go dark with blood as the sharp bone ends tear his skin apart, and Ryan is gone again, his eyes rolling in his head, shock taking him far away. 

‘Jesus, you fucking killed him!’ he hears faintly. ‘That wasn’t the plan!’ 

‘Fuck him, he wasn’t gonna talk anyway,’ the ginger says, breathing hard with exertion and rage. He throws the bat aside with a clatter. ‘Let’s dump him in The Lost’s backyard, let them take the heat if the Fake come looking.’ 

Ryan fades out completely for a while, and Jack is stroking his hair, telling him quietly that it’s alright. His legs hurt, and his heart feels wrong, but Jack is there, so he must be alright. Everything is very bright, but he’s warm for the first time in days. 

There’s a thudding impact that rattles his body, and the smell of dust and gasoline in his nose. 

He hears an engine revving into the distance. 

It’s quiet for a while, just warmth and the fine touch of dry sand that feels soft after days of concrete against his skin. 

There’s another engine, the deep rumble of a powerful motorcycle, and someone’s hands turn him over. 

‘Boss! Hey boss!’ he hears, and the sound of running feet. 

‘Fuck me, it’s the Vagabond,’ a voice drawls. ‘Someone get hold of Ramsey! I’m not taking the fucking rap for this.’ 

Ryan dreams, slipping through the haze of memory. He is distantly aware of pain, of movement, of Gavin screaming his name, but it all seems unimportant. 

He thinks of racing sticks down a creek on a day out of the city, laughing at Michael’s colourful language as he tries to encourage his twig to go faster. He thinks of the way Jeremy’s eyes lit up when Geoff handed him a pistol with Lil’ J engraved on the grip and welcomed him to the crew. He thinks of Ray’s leaving party, and the first time he came back afterwards, full of stories of solo success. He thinks of Lindsay dragging him down to the shelter after watching a documentary on abandoned pets, and coming back with a beautiful cat who didn’t seem to care about her missing leg as she explored her new home. 

Sweet memories, a blessed respite from days of fear and pain, and through them all, Jack’s voice telling him that everything will be alright. 

When he wakes, it takes a long time to separate the dreams from reality. He’s in a hospital room, but Jack is still there, humming quietly as she reads a newspaper. She’s the only person he knows who still likes physical news, slow and outdated as it is, and she keeps a giant scrapbook of articles about the Fake AH. 

He can’t move, but for the first time in what he thinks is a long time he is aware of his body again. His binder is gone, letting him breathe easily, but a loose, soft sweatshirt covers him up, disrupting the hated lines of his chest. 

There are wires everywhere, sticky pads all over his skin monitoring his heart, and the sharp ache in his chest tells him that there’s damage there. Every few minutes the steady beep of the machine skips, and the urge to cough rises in his throat. Jack doesn’t react, and he guesses that it’s nothing to worry about right now. 

His legs feel heavy, numb, and he can see the giant lumps of casts under his blanket. His last clear memory is having his legs smashed, and he’s mostly just glad to see that they’re still attached at all. He’s not even sure how he’s still alive, so being stuck in plaster is a small problem in comparison. 

‘Jack,’ he whispers, finding that his mouth is dry even though the deadly thirst has subsided. 

She looks up and smiles. 

‘Hey, Ryan. How’re you feeling?’ She puts the paper down with a rustle, and strokes his hair back with gentle hands, their faint callouses familiar. 

‘Are you real?’ Ryan asks, gazing up at her with wide eyes. 

‘Totally real,’ Jack promises. 

Ryan closes his eyes. Of course she says she’s real – it’s what he wants to hear. He drifts again. 

‘Sick people are boring,’ Gavin says, some time later. 

‘You’re an asshole,’ Jeremy says, laughing. 

‘Go bother Michael some more, at least he’s awake,’ Geoff says. 

‘Michael threatened to break my face,’ Gavin whines. ‘He’s cranky because they lowered his pain meds.’ 

‘That’s a good sign, but yeah, maybe don’t piss him off more than usual,’ Geoff agrees. 

‘Ryan, wake up. Ryaaaaan,’ Gavin coaxes. 

Ryan blinks heavily, forcing his eyes open. Gavin is being a little shit because he’s bored, but Ryan still doesn’t like to disappoint him. 

Gavin cheers when Ryan’s hazy blue eyes focus on him. 

‘Lovely Ryan!’ he coos. 

Geoff sits up at once, looking a lot more caring than Gavin. 

‘Hey buddy, you okay?’ 

Ryan is in significant pain, but his head is clearer, and his hands clench and relax when he tries to move them. 

‘I’m in hospital,’ he says, halfway between a question and a statement to himself. 

‘Yeah, well, you’re at Caleb’s. You’ve been here a couple of weeks.’ 

‘Michael’s here?’ 

Geoff looks suddenly serious. ‘Yeah. He got a taste of his own medicine, but he’s mostly going to be okay. We thought for ages that you got blown up too.’ 

Ryan shakes his head laboriously, feeling cotton scrape against a scruff of beard on his cheeks. ‘Got a little bit blown up. Woke up somewhere dark.’ 

Jeremy looks miserable, suddenly very interested in his hands. ‘We know that now. We wish we’d known sooner.’ 

‘The Lost?’ 

‘They swear to god they just found you,’ Geoff says. ‘Are those fuckers lying to us? They scored major brownie points for telling us where you were, but I’ll go back and burn down that fucking trailer park if they lied.’ 

Ryan scrunches his brow in thought, trying to piece together the last few things he remembers. ‘No, they found me after,’ he says. ‘Some pair of meth-heads had me. Underground, or far away, I think. Wanted information.’ 

‘You give them anything?’ Geoff asks casually. 

Ryan shakes his head again. ‘I promise.’ 

‘Good on you, man,’ Jeremy says, looking proud. 

‘Hey, sometimes you give up what you have to,’ Geoff tells him sternly. Jeremy has yet to experience capture or torture, and while the crew would never wish it on their newest member, there are some things only the most battle-weary members of the Fake AH understand. In the end, it’s not a problem if Ryan broke, so long as Geoff knows what’s compromised. 

‘I might have, but they pushed too hard from the start, and then I made one of them mad,’ Ryan explains. 

‘Like, cave your legs in with a crowbar mad?’ Gavin says. 

‘Baseball bat,’ Ryan replies, and the Brit looks sick. ‘He went for my binder and I kicked his balls.’ 

Geoff laughs aloud. ‘That’s awesome,’ he says between chuckles. ‘Poetic fucking justice.’ 

‘What happened to Michael? Is everyone else okay?’ Ryan asks. The longer they talk, the more awake and the more _real_ he feels, and he’s worried by Geoff’s assertion that Michael will be “mostly” okay. 

‘Everyone else is fine. You know the bombs went off early, right?’ Jeremy says. 

Ryan nods. 

‘Yeah, Michael was still in the building. A wall fell on him, which actually helped, believe it or not. He had a concussion, a bunch of broken ribs, bruised organs, hearing loss in his right ear that might or might not stick, and a lot of burns that are leaving pretty nasty scars. He’s been in here for three weeks.’ 

‘We found him, but someone else got to you first,’ Geoff says, looking devastated. ‘We spent two days pulling that place apart, but in the end we figured you’d just been totally blown up.’ 

‘I woke up in the dark. Six by six concrete room. Pitch black. Silent. Spent about four days in there without water to soften me up, then they pulled me out and shocked me a bunch. Then one guy got out a skinning knife, but I lashed out when he tried to cut off my binder. They dumped me after they messed up my legs, figured I was dead.’ 

Geoff hides his face in his hands. ‘You were totally grey and cold when we got to you,’ he says, his voice muffled. ‘Not surprised they thought they’d killed you.’ 

‘It was close a few times,’ Ryan says flatly, remembering how he’d drifted, from thirst, from pain, from shock. 

Geoff lets out a wounded noise, and Gavin grabs Ryan’s hand, squeezing it tightly as though he can stop Ryan from floating away. 

‘I’m so sorry,’ Geoff says brokenly. ‘We should have known. We should have found you. Jesus christ, we didn’t have a clue until we heard from the The Lost that someone dumped you out there. Our fucking rivals knew before we did.’ 

‘I don’t blame you,’ Ryan says at once, but he knows it’s not that simple. Geoff takes the safety of his friends very seriously, and he’ll be beating himself up about this for years. 

‘What’s my diagnosis?’ he asks, after a few minutes of guilt-ridden silence. ‘I haven’t seen Caleb, or I don’t remember seeing her.’ 

Jeremy glances at Geoff, but their leader is still staring at his hands, looking lost. 

‘I don’t think you’ve been properly awake until today, but you’ve seen her. You spent a lot of hours in surgery getting your legs pinned back together. You’ll probably walk again.’ 

‘Jesus, Jeremy!’ Gavin protests. 

‘No, tell me,’ Ryan says firmly. Jeremy’s right, he’d rather know what he’s facing. 

‘Uh, yeah, you’ll walk okay with physio and stuff, and maybe a cane,’ Jeremy goes on. ‘Your kidneys were kind of a mess from dehydration, but that’s stabilised. Your heart beat is a bit irregular from being over-stressed and getting shocked so much – not dangerously so when you’re resting, but Caleb says if that doesn’t fix itself you’ll need a pacemaker if you want to be active.’ 

‘My heart’s still healing, right?’ 

‘Yeah, I guess so.’ 

Ryan lies and considers that. It’s not the worst news. He already knew his legs were seriously messed up, and anything that isn’t “we had to amputate” sounds pretty good right now. It sounds like poor Michael might have come off worse, despite having been found immediately. 

‘Can I see Michael?’ he asks. 

‘God yes, anything to keep him occupied,’ Geoff says. 

Ryan grins at that; Michael’s always been a terrible patient. 

‘And I thought I saw Jack earlier. Is she actually here?’ 

‘She and Lindsay are with Michael. We’ve been splitting time between your rooms because we– we didn’t want you to wake up alone,’ Geoff says, in a small voice. 

‘Thanks,’ Ryan says. He doesn’t particularly want to think about being alone. He’s fairly sure there are going to be nightmares about darkness and silence in his future, and the longer he can stave those off, the better. 

‘I’ll go and get Michael. He’s a lot more mobile than you,’ Gavin says, and skips off, apparently pleased to have an excuse to go and see his boi again. 

‘Can I have a drink?’ Ryan asks, when the door has slammed loudly behind him. Gavin Free – world’s worst hospital visitor. 

‘Oh shit, yeah,’ Geoff says, looking suddenly guilty again. Ryan had told them about being denied water for days, but they hadn’t thought to offer him any. 

‘I’m on fluids, I’m not going to die, Geoff,’ Ryan reminds him. ‘My mouth is just dry.’ 

‘Yeah, but it doesn’t need to be,’ Geoff says, and offers Ryan a plastic cup with a bendy straw. 

The water tastes like heaven, cool and sweet, and Ryan drains the first cup as fast as the straw will allow. 

Geoff refills it without a word, and Ryan sits and drinks until he hears Michael cursing at Gavin in the corridor. 

The door of his room swings open, and Lindsay steers Michael’s chair inside. 

‘Hey, Ryebread!’ Michael greets, as he’s steered up to Ryan’s bed, his left ear angled close to Ryan so they can talk. ‘Welcome to the cripple club!’ 

Ryan grins despite himself. Michael’s curly hair is gone, some parts of his head shaved and others burned bald and red. There are angry patches of new skin on his face, and thick white dressings on his arms and neck that must be hiding deeper burns. He looks a mess, but Ryan is delighted just to see him. He’d been all but certain that Michael was dead. 

‘Nice bombs, asshole,’ he says, deadpan, and Michael grins. 

‘My finest fucking work, right?’ 

Ryan reaches out and takes Michael’s hand, giving it a formal shake. 

‘Congratulations,’ he says. 

Michael laughs, but doesn’t let go of his hand, and Ryan lets it rest on the edge of his bed, happy to have the contact. 

With most of the crew assembled, his room is crowded, but he’s hardly about to throw anyone out. They’re family, and knowing that they’re with him makes the prospect of his long recovery far less daunting. Michael’s injuries are different, but they both have healing to do, and possible permanent difficulties to face. Ryan feels like he can cope with anything, now that he isn’t alone. 


End file.
